There’s nothing quite like the feeling in business when you find a way to lower costs while simultaneously raising efficiency.

It’s one of the hardest balances to get right, but there are thankfully plenty of ways savvy business owners can improve their bottom line without negatively impacting productivity or staff satisfaction.

One area you may not have considered during your cost cutting measures is document management - here’s how getting it right will improve your bottom line.

Embrace remote working

You’ll read that phrase a lot, and that’s chiefly because remote working is a brilliant way to raise staff morale and their productivity levels.

It isn’t without its challenges, chief among which is document management. However, if you invest in a cloud storage system that integrates tightly with your printing and scanning environment, remote workers don’t have to miss out.

By enabling more people to work remotely, you’ll limit absences, decrease on-site costs and help your business save money with tools that rely on digital ways of working.

Focus on your digital transformation

Digitisation has long been an effective way to reduce costs.

By transferring paper documents to the digital domain and storing them in the cloud, you’ll cut paper and consumable costs and ensure time-consuming processes are dealt with more efficiently.

The more you digitise, the less physical space you’ll need to store documents, too, and in extreme circumstances, you may even find that you can reduce rental costs for premises dedicated solely to document storage.

Get smart about printing

If you need to print something, you print it, right?

Not necessarily. Printing can be one of the largest business costs and it’s easy to underestimate how much you’re spending on this simple task.

By getting smarter about printing, you’ll potentially save a lot of money. Sometimes, it’s the simple stuff, such as printing on both sides of the paper when possible, or restricting colour printing to save ink.

You can get smarter than that, though. By using features such as ‘follow-me’ printing, you can ensure print jobs are only released when their rightful owners are stood next to the printer with valid ID.

Review your devices

The old printer that constantly drinks ink, or the scanner that consumes far more electricity than is strictly necessary will needlessly eat away at your bottom line.

Worse still, if you can’t easily count how many devices you have within the premises or recall where they’re located, there’s a strong chance you’re paying for a much bigger printing infrastructure than you need.

Investing in new equipment might seem like just another way to spend your company’s money, but outdated printers will almost certainly cost you more in the long run.

Start with a full audit of your devices with the help of an IT solutions provider and begin that process of consolidation!

Outsource the tough stuff

One of the most effective ways to reduce your printing cost is by outsourcing the management of the printing environment to a managed print services (MPS) provider.

By managing your vendor relations, handling supplies ordering and gaining a detailed understanding of your print environment, an MPS provider will provide the necessary support to improve your bottom line with efficient document management.